By Owei Lakemfa
There are intense discussions going on in Nigeria. Is the United States of America (USA) preparing to attack? If it is, what are the targets? A government increasingly incapable of securing lives and property? The people, so terrified that they self-impose movement restrictions? Terrorists roaming around the country? Bandits building empires and imposing peace conditions on communities and state governments? Islamic fundamentalists, populated by foreign fighters, depopulating communities? Or can it be that the USA just wants to impose sanctions and withdraw certain support, including military assistance?
There are those already calling for national mobilization to counter a possible military invasion. Some are appealing to patriotic sentiments to defend the country’s sovereignty. There are also those, like Sheikh Gumi, who designate bandits as liberation fighters and are therefore urging the Tinubu administration to carry out actions against the USA.
These reactions are coming in the wake of mercurial President Donald Trump’s Friday, October 31, 2025, decision to again designate Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC). The first time he did so was in December 2020.
A CPC, under the US International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) of 1998, is a nation that engages in or tolerates “systemic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom.”
The narrative being pushed by the Trump administration is that there is genocide against Christians in Nigeria. This claim is partially true in the sense that there is ongoing genocide in Nigeria. This I have pointed out over the years in my columns, the latest being on June 23, 2025, titled “Nigerian Massacres: Treating Ringworm While Ignoring Leprosy.”
In it, I backed up my claims by quoting the traditional leader of the Tiv, one of the ethnic nationalities being wiped out.
The Tor Tiv, Orchivirigh Professor James Ayatse, had, following the massacre of over 200 Nigerians in Yelwata Village, Benue State, pointedly told President Bola Tinubu in a face-to-face meeting: “Your Excellency, it is not herder-farmer clashes. It is not communal clashes. It is not reprisal attacks or skirmishes. What we are dealing with here in Benue is a calculated, well-planned, full-scale genocidal invasion and land-grabbing campaign by herder-terrorists and bandits.”
By July 1, 2018 — that is, over seven years ago — in neighbouring Plateau State alone, these bandits and terrorists had wiped out 54 communities, renamed them, and have been living there ever since, while the survivors live in Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps. Since then, the situation in those states, as well as Nasarawa State, has simply become worse. For those engaged in the academic exercise of whether these are cases of genocide or not, all we need to do is define the term and apply it to the situation in these very fertile areas of the country called the Middle Belt.
The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention) of 1948 states that:
“Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such:
- Killing members of the group
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
The first three of the five definitions above fully apply to the ethnic nationalities in the Middle Belt such as the Tiv, Ngas, Idoma, Tarok, Mwaghavul, Igede, and Berom.
The issue of genocide in Nigeria having been clarified, the second leg of the USA’s claim — that genocide in Nigeria is targeted against Christians — is patently false. Yes, the victims of the Nigerian genocide are virtually all Christians, while the perpetrators are Muslims; however, the motive is not religion but land grabbing.
The bandits and criminals, who include rogue elements from the Central African Republic, Chad, and parts of West Africa, are, unlike Boko Haram, not jihadists. They are simply roaming gangs whose objectives are to wipe out indigenous ethnic nationalities, grab their lands, rename them, and establish their own homeland. They do not care about religion. In other words, even if the indigenes had been Muslims, these bandits would still have carried out the genocide.
So, the ongoing genocide in the Middle Belt is not by the Nigerian state, nor is it state-sponsored. Rather, it is carried out by non-state actors. The complicity of the Nigerian state includes its failure to defend lives and property, refusal to use the armed forces to take out the bandits, bring them to justice, and restore the victims to their ancestral lands.
In trying to hide behind a finger and be politically correct, the Tinubu administration continues to claim that this genocide — which predates it by over a decade — is a “herders-farmers clash.” This is despite the fact that the bandits have no herds except for tending AK-47 rifles. Also, the Nigerian government, by “disarming” combatants on the ground, merely disarms the indigenous people of the few arms they can use to defend themselves, while the attackers who roam the forests not only continue to keep their arms but also increase their arsenal.
Make no mistake, the Trump administration is fully aware of the Nigerian situation. Its claim of Christian genocide is opportunistic — designed to find an excuse to interfere for its undisclosed agenda. Now, I find quite silly the arguments that it is not Christians alone who are being massacred in Nigeria; should any group be massacred in the first place? The fact that Nigerians being slaughtered cut across all religions, regions, ethnic nationalities, and genders does not make it normal or tolerable.
The Tinubu government, rather than cry, make protestations, and engage in cacophonous declarations, should settle down to actual governance. It needs to punish criminality in whatever guise, including “herders-farmers” clashes. It needs to mobilize Nigerians in mass self-defence to protect their lives and property when attacked. The government should welcome assistance, including from the USA, provided it is structured and executed under Nigerian sovereignty and control.
We thank organizations and countries like China that promptly expressed support for Nigerian sovereignty. But beyond that, we need support in various ways to defeat violence, terrorism, banditry, and criminality in all parts of Nigeria.
At the end of the day, the solution and salvation of Nigeria lie in the hands of Nigerians. I wish those who want to be politically correct, especially in order to win the 2027 general elections — those who are silent because the criminals are of their ethnic stock, and those who hope they will remain safe — good luck. As the saying goes, when the heavens fall, it won’t fall on one person’s head.
